sundries

[rm]

Last night it rained and today I almost feel human. Certainly I feel like I'm through the headache, but that doesn't mean my shoulders aren't literally swollen from how they were tensing or that I'm not two days behind on everything.

Even so, I did manage to write my WIAD last night. The hardest thing about WIAD is writing these things and sitting on them, and there's nothing more I can say about that.

Patty and I also managed to watch the first episode of the last season of Buffy. New principal is HOT. The mom thing is hilarious, and wow this show really, really, really is at its best when it's in high school. I didn't notice it until this episode happened. That almost says something to me about the American narrative and what our glory days are supposed to be. Buffy brings the meta, whether it means to or not.

We (I? I'm the paranoid one) think there might be something wrong with our refrigerator. There was water coming out from under it last night and it wasn't the first time, and I feel like it's having a harder time staying cool. I should probably call someone about that.

Pat Murphy is a novelist. She is being attacked by papers. So she has entered a contest to win 20,000 of custom organizational stuff from California Closet. If she wins, she might even write another book. Vote for her. (Note, this goes to Facebook, which I'm completely impaired at, so if the link doesn't work (but you do have to log in, I think) or you can't see it... well, let me know or something).

I don't watch Criminal Minds and we all know I have a lot of feelings about fan protest movements, but I still feel the need to alert you to this petition which protests CBS's decision to save money by basically eliminating female characters from the show.

Let's talk about Obama's oil disaster speech. First, CNN tells us that because it was written at a 10th-grade level it may have been too difficult for his audience. Pause and weep.

Okay, done there? Then, take a look at Rachel Maddow (who did it most overtly) and everyone else talking about how the speech should have been. Chase that with an episode of West Wing. I KNOW A CERTAIN STRIPE OF US ALL WANT THE WEST WING MOMENT OUT OF THIS. I know. We want the nation to suddenly come to heel and unity because of a righteous moment of eloquent rage from a deeply professorial president who causes us to cast our differences aside and come together in a new version of America.

But it's not going to happen. It can't in a society that thinks shopping is a moral obligation and that the best thing you can do for those in need to leave 'em on the far hill and hope someone else rescues them (not that they deserve it, *snerk*). It's not going to happen in a society that eschews science, hates education, doesn't want to know the difference between a fact and an opinion and has no remotely unifying concept of civic duty. THE JED BARTLET MOMENT ISN'T COMING. And a hell of a lot more people and history are to blame for that than Obama.

I'm nearly a professional optimist, but I pretty much don't know what to say other than stop holding your breath. Unless you're near the oil. Then you should probably keep holding your breath, but for other reasons.

Oil isn't just ruining the Gulf Coast. Look at what's been done to Nigeria.

I haven't even read this yet, but I can already feel myself twitching and not in a good way: Debate rages as to what the normal range of sexual desire is in women. Let me tell you though, I have a lot more "sexually satisfying events" than 4.5 a month. On the other hand, I'm not a normal anything. Article also includes this quote from an expert: "Women’s sex lives are often a struggle, a disappointment, an archipelago of regret." I don't even know what to say to that. Do you?

The Guardian is running a series on "transgender journeys".

Catios!

Comments

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

*sad look at the catios* We had a catio until someone tried to break into our house. We haven't gotten ourselves together enough to fix the busted screens so our cats could go back out on the porch.

I weep for our nation and long for the days -- within living memory -- when propaganda posters and presidential speeches were erudite and complex and people were expected to get it.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Remember when it was a moral obligation to watch both the nominating conventions and they were on constantly for days because things actually happened at them?

[sethg]

Do not read transcripts of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. It will put you in a blue funk for the entire weekend.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

I was listening to all the Kennedy speeches yesterday while working/cleaning. It was a different world, I guess.

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

That "archipelago of regret" quote gave me WTF-face this morning.

Critics say Boehringer’s market campaign exaggerates the prevalence of the condition and could create anxiety among women, making them think they have a condition that requires medical treatment.

Nah. Women can think for themselves and they already know if lack of sexual desire is a problem for them.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

But Foxy, that would require that we trust women to know things! We can't do that! Especially not when health and the medical industry is involved!

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

But you shouldn't fuck with nature! And it has possible side effects, unlike Viagra and Cialis and... oh wait...

I'm not saying that we should medicate everything, but I took some weird sort of paternalism out of this article. "We don't want to make women worry that their sex drives maybe aren't up to some 'normal' standard!"

Nobody thought that about guys who have erectile dysfunction or who don't feel like having sex four times a week.

[sinonmybody.livejournal.com]

I didn't read the whole article fully, but... I dunno. When I got pregnant, my sex drive DIED. like, literally, I got aroused, period, *maybe* five times in the whole nine months. It's resumed somewhat in the last two months {I'm 8m postpartum} but certainly not to the level it was at before and certainly not even anywhere near 4.5 events a month. There's a whole lot of media bombardment about how women are supposed to be so horny while pregnant, but I've talked to far more women who had experiences closer to mine than women who actually got the randy hormones. I wouldn't take the pill, but mostly because I have an intense distrust of such things and think we as a country are far over-medicated with products whose side effects have far huger harmful potential risk, if that makes sense {I curse the day I got my IUD, for example- if I'd been aware of what might happen I would've gone running in the opposite direction, and my side effects weren't even the worst possible}. I do think it's not totally that far off from normal for a significant number of women to have a problem with it-- their example cited at the end was a mom of three.
I don't think they're saying it's normal to have only "4.5 sexually satisfying events," I got the impression more that they're trying to help women like me, who are not nearly that lucky at the current point in their lives.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I think this is probably a case of (as is often the case with the Times lately): "work good, article about work: TERRIBLE".

[sinonmybody.livejournal.com]

my thoughts exactly.
that and OMFG I HATE YOU MED COMM FOR BLOWING A SMALL PROPORTION OF POPULATION OUT OF PROPORTION FOR PROFIT...

[graene.livejournal.com]

Having been there - it may also help to retrain your body to a 'sex is fun' setting by just having it to express affection to your partner despite lack of desire several times.

[sinonmybody.livejournal.com]

that is how i have been working on it. unfortuntately the problem we have there is my hubby is very vanilla and i am very not. :-/ but we're trying! :)

[graene.livejournal.com]

Interesting - my husband wanted to jump straight back to the non-vanilla stuff and I am still working on interest in that after two years.

[sinonmybody.livejournal.com]

eh, I have never had much interest in vanilla. lol my barbies played slave & master. :P

[graene.livejournal.com]

After all my body went through, what felt good had changed, and the whole parenting challenge played havoc with the roles everywhere. Jumping straight back into hardcore dominance roles without remapping my body...was a bad idea. It's not that vanilla is so interesting as that it's non-objectionable and there's less risk of waking the kids.

[sinonmybody.livejournal.com]

LOL yeah that {risk of kid wakeage} def is a problem. ^.^

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I had the randy hormones for a couple of pregnancies, but afterward? NOTHING. And it was a painful nothing.
My mother passed on excellent advice: lube.


Right now 4.2 sexually satisfying events per month sounds good. I do manual labor in Memphis delta heat, write romance novels and have 3 kids still at home. Sex? it's mostly between my ears and on the page.

[sinonmybody.livejournal.com]

heh, i honestly have no need for lube, i have an abundance of fluid once you basically just touch me lol. {ahh tmi much? :P } it's just getting my mind in!
lol and yeah... 4.2 sexually satisfying events right now would put me OVER THE GORRAM MOON.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I didn't bother to read the article about sexual desire, just, how many times a month does one of those pop up and just drive us insane with the sexist assumptions and the whole how we're "supposed" to feel. The mere fact that it's framed like this is infuriating.

Nigeria made me think about the latest fandom bruhaha... but I'm just callous. Much of the African continent is nothing but the West's dumping ground. For some reason, people have a hard time understating that colonialism isn't so much over as mutates.

[aviv-b.livejournal.com]

Love the Catios. I've seen a lot of outdoor enclosures for people who have actual yards but for apartment dwellers, alas. I don't think the condo board would approve one hanging ouside my windows. Not to mention Mies van der Rohe would roll over in his grave. Sigh.

[dabhug.livejournal.com]

I KNOW A CERTAIN STRIPE OF US ALL WANT THE WEST WING MOMENT OUT OF THIS. I know. We want the nation to suddenly come to heel and unity because of a righteous moment of eloquent rage from a deeply professorial president who causes us to cast our differences aside and come together in a new version of America.

Paint me in that stripe.

ETA: And then I kept reading, THE JED BARTLET MOMENT ISN'T COMING. And a hell of a lot more people and history are to blame for that than Obama. And you're right about that, too.

I echo kathrynrose.

[marcmagus]

I "love" how the article starts off by equating a pill to "restore depressed female sex drive" with Viagra. Because that's exactly what it does, and there's nothing at all problematic with the equation...

Also, I'm pretty sure I've been to the Archipelago of Regret in a D&D campaign I used to play in. Can't say it was a good choice, though.

If you want to try to tackle the fridge yourself, one thing to check is whether there's ice buildup on the cooling coils impeding heat transfer and/or airflow. There's usually a panel in the freezer you can open to get at them.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Re: fridge -- Oh, you are AWESOME. Because this seems to make sense with what we are experiencing.

[marcmagus]

Glad that hour I spent with my brother leaning into my parents' freezer with my mother's hairdryer [my parents, they are so normal in so many ways] will have more positive effects than just getting their fridge/freezer working for another few months.

I should note that while I'm told it's not uncommon to have to do this about once a year (not a big deal, gives you a chance to clean house), if it becomes an every month or two sort of deal like it was for my parents it probably means something's broken: there's a circuit which is supposed to heat the coils every now and then to melt off condensation which was broken on my parents', or the fan could have failed. The latter was the problem when we moved in here; it might be something you could do yourself to save some money if you're responsible for repairs.

[1-mad-squirrel.livejournal.com]

I have to say, I'm in the struggle, disappointment and regret category.

[rm.livejournal.com]

But is it an archipelago? Something about the metaphor struck me as sort of distasteful, when I thought there were good opportunities, essentially squandered in the article to talk not just about potential medical reasons but things from sexual assault to working full-time and being a caregiver to both kids and elderly parents. But instead.... mysterious land mass!

[marita-c.livejournal.com]

That's the male logic for ya. She doesn't want to put out = there must be some medical pathology --> Let's give her a pill to make it all better

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

But is it an archipelago? Something about the metaphor struck me as sort of distasteful

To me, it implies that a woman's life is volcanic, eruptive with chaos and bad choices, earthquakes and tsunamis that come out of nowhere and destroy everything around them, pyroclastic flows of pure emotive force that raze whole cities...

Distasteful is a beginning.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I pictured it as a group of islands, each an encounter, some circling back on themselves. Each has its own attractions, a gorgeous beach, a volcano, pretty flowers. But you can't go back and recapture them. Visiting the island again won't be like it was.

An archipelago of regret...

That is so going into a novel.

[1-mad-squirrel.livejournal.com]

We have our own little sexaul ghetto. * snerk *

I've just figured I was either neurologically wired wrong, or psychologically unable to truly let go. I've never experienced what I've heard some women describe, with a partner or even by myself. And this was before I went on antidepressants that tank the libido and interfere with climax.

[kathrynrose.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about TWW a lot lately too. I liked Rachel's version of the speech much better than Obama's. I am completely hopeless about this spill, and angry and grieving all at the same time. I can't really speak intelligently about it, and I'm so often pissed at all the oil spill jokes I've been seeing and hearing. It's tailspin-inducing, so I look away a lot. And then I feel guilty.

Re your fridge - don't put off having someone look at it. You will be surprised how much it will affect your electric bill if it continues to struggle to cool.

[airspaniel.livejournal.com]

If asked to describe my sex life, even at my most frustrated and/or imbalanced, I would never, ever, have thought of the phrase "archipelago of regret." That's hilarious.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

An archipelago of regret? Not mine. Of course, I also define "lesbian bed death" as *breaking* the bed from overactive sex.

Also, Pat Murphy is one of the Honored Guests at FOGcon 2011, along with Jeff VanderMeer. I've been reading her wonderful books. Anything that will get me more of them is good, so I will definitely vote for her.

[meirion.livejournal.com]

There are engineers on this planet who could fix the oil-spill. It's a question of making them care enough, or whether they have enough cope right now.

I'm not one of them, but I've worked with people who might be.

[malle-babbe.livejournal.com]

It's not going to happen in a society that eschews science, hates education, doesn't want to know the difference between a fact and an opinion and has no remotely unifying concept of civic duty. THE JED BARTLET MOMENT ISN'T COMING. And a hell of a lot more people and history are to blame for that than Obama.

I fully expect that before this decade is through, we will see an angry Tea Party mob burning down a public library. You heard it here first.

What I don't get is how no one is connecting the dots between 30 years of dismantling unions, weakening workplace safety and environmental regulations, and the right wing media demonizing folks who don't want the next Bhopal, Chernobyl, and/or Love Canal to happen in their neighborhood, and the current clustermess in the Gulf.

Yes, the invisible hand of the free market will balance things out, but by punching the economically vulnerable in the throat...

[aviv-b.livejournal.com]

This!

[5251962.livejournal.com]

"Women’s sex lives are often a struggle, a disappointment, an archipelago of regret." I don't even know what to say to that. Do you?

Yes, yes, I do. But it involves pointing and laughing, and the "Where on earth would ya get that idea?" Pretty much. What the heck's an achipelago of regret?

I thought they were islands?? ;)

That being the case, I had an afterthought. I'm going to describe mine as a cloister of clusterfuckery and confused idealization". Drama, AND landscaping. Boowah!

[lovefromgirl.livejournal.com]

"Women’s sex lives are often a struggle, a disappointment, an archipelago of regret." I don't even know what to say to that. Do you?

Having read the article: wow, heterocentric much? I wonder if they've asked the LGBT part of the population how they're doing, sexually speaking? I'd love to see if 4.5 is still the number in that case.

When that quote has been true for me, most of the time, it's been because the person I was with did not bother to consider what worked for both of us (i.e. not just him). Sometimes, of course, it is the meds misfiring, or my birth control not containing the right balance of hormones, and so I get those fixed. Then things get better. The journey can continue with someone, I'm happy to say, who is willing to be with me, not drag me along.

[malle-babbe.livejournal.com]

Just once I wish one of these articles would state the obvious and talk about how one of the pervasive messages of our culture is men are never to be corrected by women, because it can make them sulky at best, stabby at worst.

I can't tell you the number of times in a work setting I have plainly stated, "it isn't like X, but Y" (the most recent case was my fruitless effort to convince someone that they needed to use an art shipping company) and it is as if I was talking to a brick wall... Now that I work somewhere that is mostly women it doesn't happen as often, and after the first couple of times where I only had to say, "it isn't like X, but Y" ONCE and had everyone agree with me, you could have knocked me over with a feather...

[sinonmybody.livejournal.com]

{birth control can be a terribad thing. i really really wish we educated young women more on how their bodies work so they had other options from the get-go.}

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Archipelago?

Which bit is the islands?

[djfanboy.livejournal.com]

*wonders how many google searches there will be off the word 'archipelago' from that article from the masses who don't know big words...*

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Obama is immensely frustrating, but only because he's clearly in touch with the average mood of this deeply messed up nation and is perfectly willing to reflect a slightly left of center vision of it.

OTOH, the catios are wonderful.

[kel-reiley.livejournal.com]

"Women’s sex lives are often a struggle, a disappointment, an archipelago of regret."

add a "Some" at the beginning of that, and it's very true - and it's true b/c women are discouraged from expressing any type of sexuality

it's wrong for a woman to seek out sex for the sake of pleasure
it's wrong for a woman to inform her partner(s) on how to please her
it's wrong for a woman to enjoy sex on a purely physical level

basically, if you don't have a dick, sex was not designed with your wants/needs/pleasure in mind

^i assume you realise i am being hostile and sarcastic here

[neadods.livejournal.com]

and wow this show really, really, really is at its best when it's in high school.

I think when Buffy left high school, it also left behind its foundational metaphor and started flapping aimlessly loose.